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30 Mar 2013

Well, well, many a rock-crawler – now renamed by me as ‘heap-crawler’, will understand where I’m coming from on this commentary – but I expect some will be ‘blue vex’ about me criticising their beloved gobar-heap at a distance. Yuh know – I should ‘come dong and wallow in dey heap’ in solidarity, before I’m worthy of critical comment – and I’ve always given short shrift to such rubbish. So here goes!

A Nation is plunged into darkness due to a total power failure (i.e. electricity power outage) between 00:45AM and approximately 08:00AM on 29th March 2013. This led to the Prime Minister of the ‘banana republic’ getting involved and putting the Nation on high alert. According to Newsday 2013-03-30 the country’s water supply, hospitals, the national traffic light grid, national television stations, cellular phone services and even bank ATM machines were all affected to varying degrees. According to the TT Express this fiasco was caused by a ‘gas supply problem’.

Oh? Gas supply problem? What does that really mean? It means nothing – unless you are a naive idiot who accepts everything at the most superficial level. But assuming you’re not so naive, how does a whole country of 1.3 Million people just get shut down for a gas supply problem? Would that be due to ‘human error’ that caused the problem or would that be related to gas coming out of the earth running low in supply – would be the first two things to come to my mind.

But I know heap crawlers. They will probably be happy to accept that it was a ‘computer failure’ or ‘was ah accident’ or some rubbishy explanation like that. Well not me!! I doh eat nice. I would want ‘heads on sticks’! I was gonna be hopping mad! Even if the gas supply coming from the earth was running low; if I was running a country. I would want to know about it years in advance, not suddenly in the middle of the night!

On this monumental balls up, the “…blackout gained international coverage by foreign media houses, including the Washington Post, New York Times, Tampa Tribune and Miami Herald. United States television networks ABC News and CNN also reported the story, saying the blackout was caused by a problem with the natural gas supply in Trinidad and a subsequent failure at a plant in Tobago. Yahoo News also reported the incident and quoted part of Persad-Bissessar’s statement after the blackout. There was also a post of the blackout on the New England Cable News.”according to the TT Guardian (2013-03-29). In their report it was clear to see that this was the third major power failure in the country in three years.

I had direct reports from ‘The Heap’ that many people were worried that the power failure was part of a coup d’etat. People were vigilant and preparing for the worst. You see, heap-crawlers, are used to power outages which could occur with a frequency of daily to a few times per month – each of these for maybe around 2 – 4 hours. So, when they realised that this power outage was for some 8 hours, and affected the whole country, they would be right to worry.

But seriously, is that the way to live life in a Nation that is blessed with so much natural energy resources and with some very intelligent people (amongst the usual crop of dunceys). On the heap, people have adapted at their own expense, to buying the traditional ‘Delco’ (home power generator), water tanks to buffer against the regular interruptions of water supply, and of late many heap-crawlers have built steel cages around their houses - and armed themselves with weapons to protect their homes and loved ones.

No! No! NO! This is not the way for any set of people to live – other than in some sub-third-world country. To find any argument which justifies the status quo, is nothing less than pure dunceyness, as evident above! QED.